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Concerned Women for America’s Janice Shaw Crouse is very concerned about a new Census Bureau report finding a spike in births to unmarried mothers. In an American Thinkercolumn today, Crouse accuses “liberals, progressives, feminists and welfare advocates” of responding to “problems associated by the triad of out-of-wedlock childbearing, single motherhood, and child poverty” by promoting “abortion and increased welfare dependency.” The failure of these policies, she claims, “is obvious to anyone who will face the realities that are evident should one take a risky drive into certain neighborhoods of our cities.”

The founding fathers, she continues, “would roll over in their graves” to see that the country has become “mired in reckless self-indulgence and thus regressed in terms of people’s well being.”

For decades, liberals, progressives, feminists and welfare advocates have tried to get to the bottom of the problems associated by the triad of out-of-wedlock childbearing, single motherhood, and child poverty. Heretofore, the solutions have been abortion and increased welfare dependency. I don’t need to ask, “How is that working for us?” The answer is obvious to anyone who will face the realities that are evident should one take a risky drive into certain neighborhoods of our cities or choose the safer route of reading about the dramatic increases in non-marital births documented in the SECCUM report.

The nation’s founding fathers first instituted a national census so that the nation could “mark the progress of society.” They would roll over in their graves to see that the nation they founded with great hope and based on principles of personal and civic responsibility, instead of progressing, has instead become mired in reckless self-indulgence and thus regressed in terms of people’s well being. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the past four decades trying to alleviate the consequences of poor and irresponsible choices only to reap a harvest of greater dependency than ever before and several generations of children at risk for all the negative outcomes that parents hope to avoid (truancy, delinquency, substance abuse, etc). It is not merely the demographics of non-marital child bearing that need to be publicized but an honest, extensive reporting of the damages as well.

When the sum total of our morality, both personal and public, consists of not being judgmental, we should not be surprised to find that there is little will to be concerned with more than the pursuit of whatever brings a moment of pleasure today with no regard for the effects this will have for anyone’s well-being tomorrow.